Fundamental associative skills are the subject of numerous games and game devices. For example, the card game often referred to as "concentration" typically employs recalling information on one side of an object; the information being normally covered and being only briefly disclosed to a player. The player must then recall and associate the information with a particular object so as to form pairs of objects having similar information.
Another game of this type employs combinations of letters which serves to form initials of individual's names. Typically, the game is played by arranging the alphabet in a first column and then writing a random phrase in a second column next to the alphabet column. In this manner, first and last initials are associated in couplets with one another. Players then attempt to associate names of individuals with the initial couplets. The player who is able to associate the greatest number of names is the winner of that round of the game. The game is fun and entertaining as well as being quite challenging and educational.
A drawback of this letter game, however, is that as the game is played repeatedly, players develop a certain familiarity with particular initial couplets and corresponding name associations. This causes a certain degree of repetitiveness to the game as players develop a rote-type association, rather than a creative association to initial couplets. Therefore, there exists a need for an apparatus for selectively arbitrarily creating couplets of initials and dividing the overall set or pool comprised of names of individuals into sets and/or subsets of names which may be utilized in the game.
There have been several devices in which a user manipulates slides so as to selectively and/or randomly choose letters, however most did so to form words. Examples of these devices are U.S. Pat. Nos.: 1,286,157, issued to Vizcarra; 2,974,433, issued to Litzinger; 3,947,036, issued to Kupec; and 4,227,697, issued to Castanis. In each of these devices the object, to some degree, was to form words, rather than initial couplets. Further, the letters of .these devices are typically arranged on slides, wherein the user views an individual letter on a slide through an aperture. Therefore, these devices are overly complex and not suited to display, as a column, an entire series of initial couplets.
Another device, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,231, issued to Cammarata, illustrates the use of sets of letters which, in combination with dice and marker means, forms a plurality of letters from which words are formed. The drawback of using such an apparatus for forming columns of initial couplets, however, is that the letter sets are fixed, and that the means for choosing the sets of letters are overly complex.
Therefore, there arises a need for an apparatus which selectively and effectively forms columns of initial couplets for use in a game wherein players associate names of individuals with such initial couplets. Further, such apparatus should provide means for distinguishing sets and/or subsets of individuals from the larger set or pool of all individuals whose names may satisfy the criteria of the initial couplet.